From Alberta to Australia, from Finland to France, and beyond, voters are increasingly showing their displeasure with expensive energy policies imposed by politicians in an inane effort to purportedly fight human-caused climate change.
Skepticism over whether humans are causing dangerous climate change has always been higher in America than in most industrialized countries. As a result, governments in Europe, Canada, and other developed areas are much farther along the energy rationing path, cutting carbon dioxide emissions as required. However, residents in these countries have begun to revolt against the higher energy costs they suffer under due to high taxes on fossil fuels and mandates to use expensive renewable energy.
This is what originally prompted protesters in France to don yellow vests and take to the streets in 2018. They were protesting scheduled increases in fuel taxes, electricity prices, and stricter vehicle emissions controls, which French President Emmanuel Macron had claimed were necessary to meet the country’s greenhouse gas reduction commitments under the Paris climate agreement. After the first four weeks of protest, Macron’s government canceled the climate action plan.
Also in 2018, in part as a reaction against Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s climate policies, global warming skeptic Doug Ford was elected as premier of Ontario, Canada’s most populous province. Ford announced he would end energy taxes imposed by Ontario’s previous premier and would join Saskatchewan’s premier in a legal fight against Trudeau’s federal carbon dioxide tax.
And in August 2018, Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull was forced to resign over carbon dioxide restrictions he had planned to meet the country’s Paris climate commitments. His successor announced that new goals of reducing energy prices and improving reliability, not fighting climate change, would be the government’s priority going forward. Subsequently, Australia’s deputy prime minister and environment minister announced the country would continue using coal for electricity and expand coal mining and exports.
But 2018 was just a prelude for the political climate revolt to come.
In mid-March, the Forum for Democracy (FvD), a fledgling political party just three years old, tied for the largest number of seats, 12, in the divided Dutch Senate in the 2019 elections. FvD takes a decidedly skeptical stance on climate change. On the campaign trail, Thierry Baudet, FvD’s leader, said the government should stop funding programs to meet the country’s commitments to international climate change agreements, saying such efforts are driven by “climate change hysteria.”
In Finland, climate change policies became the dominant issue in the April 14 election, as support for climate skepticism suddenly surged. While all the other parties proposed plans to raise energy prices and limit energy use, when all the votes had been counted, the Finns Party, which made the fight against expensive climate policies the central part of its platform, came out the big winner with the second-highest number of seats in Parliament. Just two months prior to the election, polls showed the Finns Party’s support hovering below 10%. But after the the party made battling alarmist climate policies its main goal, its popularity soared, delivering it the second-most seats in Finland’s legislature - 39, just one seat behind the Social Democratic Party, with 40 seats. Even the New York Times noted the Finns Party’s electoral surge was based on its expressed climate skepticism.
In Alberta, where the economy declined after Prime Minister Trudeau’s climate policies were enacted, voters on April 16 threw out the reigning Premier Rachel Notley and her New Democratic Party, which supported federal climate policies. The United Conservative Party, headed by newly elected Premier Jason Kenney, took over after vowing to scrap the province’s carbon tax and every other policy in NDP’s climate action plan. As part of that effort, Kenney said he would reverse plans to accelerate the closure of the province’s coal power plants and its cap on emissions from the oil sands. In addition, Kenney says he will challenge the federal government’s climate impositions in court and streamline regulations hampering the province’s critical oil and gas industry and pipeline construction.
As daily headlines become ever more shrill, hyping climate fears based on projections made by unverified climate models, the international public is becoming increasingly wary of the Chicken Little claims of impending climate doom. Voters in developed countries are saying “enough is enough” to high energy prices that punish the most vulnerable but do nothing to control the weather.
Anthony is a good friend from way back in the early days of TWC. He worked with me and many others on a comprehensive overview of Temperature issues here. He also undertook a volunteer effort with many in the field to evaluate station siting, finding most did not meet the NOAA standards - which he then worked with a team of climatologists to examine (shown below). After that was released, NOAA’s GAO did their analysis and in a report showed by their methodology that 42% of the network in 2010 failed to meet siting standards and they have recommendations to NOAA for solving this problem. He then worked with a team of climatologists to examine and publish the impact analysis (here, discussed below). Now a new NOAA analysis shows poor station siting does matter.
I’ve been saying for years that surface temperature measurements (and long term trends) have been affected by encroachment of urbanization on the placement of weather stations used to measure surface air temperature, and track long term climate. In doing so we found some hilariously bad examples of climate science in action, such as the official USHCN climate monitoring station at the University of Arizona, Tucson:
USHCN weather station in a parking lot. University of Arizona, Tucson
I have published on the topic in the scientific literature, and found this to be true based on the science we’ve done of examining the USHCN and applying the siting methodology of Leroy 2010.
In Fall et al, 2011 we discovered that there was a change to the diurnal temperature range (DTR). It decreased where stations had been encroached upon, because of the heat sink effect of man-made materials (asphalt, concrete, bricks, etc.) that were near stations.
For layman readers that don’t know what diurnal variation is, it is the daily variation of temperature due to the variation of incoming solar radiation from rotation of the earth on its axis.
Here is what we found; in the best-sited stations, the diurnal temperature range in the lower 48 states has no century-scale trend, but the poorly sited stations had a reduction in DTR:
These results suggest that the DTR in the United States has not decreased due to global warming, and that analyses to the contrary were at least partly contaminated by station siting problems. Indeed, DTR tended to increase when temperatures were fairly stable and tended to decrease when temperatures rose.
Fall, S., A. Watts, J. Nielsen-Gammon, E. Jones, D. Niyogi, J. Christy, and R.A. Pielke Sr., 2011: Analysis of the impacts of station exposure on the U.S. Historical Climatology Network temperatures and temperature trends. J. Geophys. Res., in press. Copyright (2011) American Geophysical Union.
A few years back in 2012, I noted that NOAA was doing an experiment to prove or disprove what we learned.
Initial funding was provided this year by the USRCRN Program for a multi-year experiment to better understand the thermal impacts of buildings with parking lots on air temperature measurements. A site near the offices of ATDD will be instrumented to measure accurately the air temperature and other variables at multiple distances from the potential thermal heat source, corresponding to the distances from thermal sources used in classifying USCRN stations (Figure 7).
This study will have several applied and practical outcomes. Determining the downwind range of influence of a typical building will be important for understanding built environment impacts on surface air temperature measurements. Other measurements of radiation and heat fluxes will help illuminate the physical processes responsible for any detected heat transfers. Finally, this information will help influence future USCRN/USRCRN siting decisions. Additional insight is being sought by collaborating with National Weather Service (NWS) and National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) on extensions of the basic project. This effort promises to be greatly useful to understanding climate quality temperature measurements and how they can be influenced by the station site environment.
They have finally published. (h/t to Steve Mosher) Guess what? Like I’ve said all along (and been excoriated for saying so) they found exactly what we did.
A field experiment was performed in Oak Ridge, TN, with four instrumented towers placed over grass at increasing distances (4, 30, 50, 124, and 300 m) from a built-up area. Stations were aligned in such a way to simulate the impact of small-scale encroachment on temperature observations. As expected, temperature observations were warmest for the site closest to the built environment with an average temperature difference of 0.31 and 0.24C for aspirated and unaspirated sensors respectively. Mean aspirated temperature differences were greater during the evening (0.47C) than day (0.16C). This was particularly true for evenings following greater daytime solar insolation (20+ MJDay−1) with surface winds from the direction of the built environment where mean differences exceeded 0.80C. The impact of the built environment on air temperature diminished with distance with a warm bias only detectable out to tower-B’ located 50 meters away.
The experimental findings were comparable to a known case of urban encroachment at a U. S. Climate Reference Network station in Kingston, RI. The experimental and operational results both lead to reductions in the diurnal temperature range of ~0.39C for fan aspirated sensors. Interestingly, the unaspirated sensor had a larger reduction in DTR of 0.48C. These results suggest that small-scale urban encroachment within 50 meters of a station can have important impacts on daily temperature extrema (maximum and minimum) with the magnitude of these differences dependent upon prevailing environmental conditions and sensing technology.
And, we’ve published at AGU on the effects of siting on 30 year temperature trends:
The quality of temperature station siting matters for temperature trends
Anthony Watts / December 17, 2015
30 year trends of temperature are shown to be lower, using well-sited high quality NOAA weather stations that do not require adjustments to the data.
NEW STUDY OF NOAA’S U.S. CLIMATE NETWORK SHOWS A LOWER 30-YEAR TEMPERATURE TREND WHEN HIGH QUALITY TEMPERATURE STATIONS UNPERTURBED BY URBANIZATION ARE CONSIDERED
EMBARGOED UNTIL 13:30 PST (16:30 EST) December 17th, 2015
SAN FRANCISCO, CA - A new study about the surface temperature record presented at the 2015 Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union suggests that the 30-year trend of temperatures for the Continental United States (CONUS) since 1979 are about two thirds as strong as officially NOAA temperature trends.
Figure 3 - Comparisons of well sited (compliant Class 1&2) USHCN stations to poorly sited USHCN stations (non-compliant, Classes 3,4,&5) by CONUS and region to official NOAA adjusted USHCN data (V2.5) for the entire (compliant and non-compliant) USHCN dataset.
Using NOAA’s U.S. Historical Climatology Network, which comprises 1218 weather stations in the CONUS, the researchers were able to identify a 410 station subset of “unperturbed” stations that have not been moved, had equipment changes, or changes in time of observations, and thus require no “adjustments” to their temperature record to account for these problems. The study focuses on finding trend differences between well sited and poorly sited weather stations, based on a WMO approved metric Leroy (2010)1for classification and assessment of the quality of the measurements based on proximity to artificial heat sources and heat sinks which affect temperature measurement. An example is shown in Figure 2 below, showing the NOAA USHCN temperature sensor for Ardmore, OK.
Figure 1 - USHCN Temperature sensor located on street corner in Ardmore, OK in full viewshed of multiple heatsinks.
Dare I call this new NOAA paper vindication?
Or, by doing so will the rabble of global warming zealots led by schmucks like Dr. Michael Mann find yet another reason to label me a “Koch funded science denier”?
I could use a beer right about now. You can support the work here.
Alarmists and eco fanatics and their comrades in the fake news media love to play ambulance chasers and play up every extreme as examples of man-induced climate gone wild. It is an unfalsifiable hypothesis.They cover both side of every weather extreme - hot/cold, too wet/too dry, more hurricanes/record long lull, more tornadoes/record long lull, less snow/record snows, more ice/less ice. For example, recently we saw dueling papers on Greenland ice disappearing faster than we thought and Greenland ice increasing and glaciers growing.
Also see here how sea level inconveniently slowing in gauge and satellite measurements has been altered to give impression of rising oceans.
The propaganda barrage by climate activists has few precedents in modern US history, increasing in intensity and the magnitude of its exaggerations. Any extreme weather, no matter how typical in history, becomes evidence of human influences: heat waves, cold, floods, snow, and - as described in this post - droughts. Activists hope that their flow of alarmist “news” will shape public opinion, just as a riven can carve through mountains.
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Permadrought was forecast just 6 years ago. It was localized in Texas and California (both states have an upward, though not statistically significant long term trend).
The Atlantic has cooled, and regional drought is giving way to widespread rains.
In fact, the rain the 12 months from May 2018 to April 2019 shows the wettest such period since records began in 1895 for the nation.
Note: CLICK ON ACRESEARCH ICON TOP OF PAGE TO ACCESS FACT CHECKS ON 11 ALARMIST CLAIMS BY OUR TEAM OF EXPERTS working pro bono on combatting the scare tactics of eco warriors and their compliant scientist friends and breathlessly reported in the fake news media. Support Icecap efforts to combat scientific fraud and environmental fanaticism with a donation via a secure access to Paypal.
Roger Pielke Jr, though a proclaimed believer in man made influences shows how drought has reached a record low level of areal coverage this century.
The graph above shows data for the entire period covered by the US Drought Monitor. This week marks the first time in the record that >90% of the US has experienced conditions of NO drought. Some further info:
Since 2000, the linear trend in the data indicates that the overall proportion of the US experiencing no drought conditions increased from about 50% to about 60%.
According to the Drought Monitor, more than 283 million people currently live in regions experiencing no drought. This is the most people in the history of the US to experience no drought conditions at once.
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ICECAP NOTE: Long Term Drought blend shows no issues.
Torrential rains are not new to this part of the world. The deaths are due to the various unfortunate conditions associated with poverty. None can be blamed on “climate change.”
Have you thought to yourself that the Climate Change movement seems more and more like a religious movement?
I have, so I researched how to identify a religious cult. Rick Ross, an expert on cults and intervention specialist, developed a list of ten warning signs for unsafe groups, which is published by the Cult Education Institute. So let’s take a look at all ten signs and compare:
1. Absolute authoritarianism without meaningful accountability.
The leading advocates of the Climate Change movement are politicians, entertainers, and even children. Climate preachers such as Al Gore and Leonardo DiCaprio lack any formal scientific training whatsoever, and live personal lives of unparalleled luxury while prescribing carbon austerity for the masses. Yet no one is permitted to point out their scientific ignorance or call attention to their hypocritical lifestyles.
Child advocates such as Greta Thuneberg and the crudely indoctrinated children of the “Sunrise movement” are essentially sock puppets for their shameless activist handlers. Refuse to bend the knee to these tiny fascists, as Diane Feinstein most recently did, and the mainstream left will relentlessly attack you as an accessory to mass murder.
The authority of Climate Change leaders is entirely unmerited and absolute, yet no one is permitted to hold them accountable for their ignorance, inexperience, or brazen lies. Thus, the Climate Change movement clearly meets the first warning sign for unsafe groups.
2. No tolerance for questions or critical inquiry.
The conclusions of the Climate Change movement may not be challenged or questioned under any circumstances. Those who dare scrutinize the conclusions, methodology, or prescriptions of “climate scientists” are categorically dismissed as a “Climate Denier”, an excommunicated untouchable whose opinion is no longer valid on any subject.
Questions and critical inquiry aren’t merely dismissed or refuted. The unfortunate heretic immediately experiences a relentless ad hominem onslaught of scorn and hatred from the political and media left, and is often subjected to accusations of outright murder. Simply question the effectiveness of a “carbon tax” and you may find yourself tied to a stake.
There is no tolerance for questioning the Climate Change movement, and thus it clearly meets the second warning sign for unsafe groups.
3. No meaningful financial disclosure regarding budget, expenses such as an independently audited financial statement.
Hardly anyone knows just how much money is spent on “Climate research” every year. The cost is spread out among laughably useless study grants, wind and solar farm subsidies, carbon offset credits, “green” building code evaluation and enforcement, salaries for bureaucrats solely dedicated to “climate concerns”...you get the idea, it’s a lot of hazy money.
The abhorrent practice of “sue and settle” was a flat out money laundering scheme that allowed sympathetic government officials to transfer millions of tax dollars to radical leftist environmental groups. The practice only ended when the Trump administration used executive power to clamp down on it.
The total amount of yearly financial expenditure on the Climate Change movement is vague, difficult to track, and often carried out in unethical manners. Thus, the Climate Change movement exhibits the third warning sign for unsafe groups.
4. Unreasonable fear about the outside world, such as impending catastrophe, evil conspiracies and persecutions.
This one is pretty obvious. The Climate Change movement always shouts out revised and updated apocalypse predictions, eerily reminiscent of the stereotypical bum on the sidewalk with that “The End Is Near” sign. “The world will end in X years if we don’t do X” is the constant refrain. The years always pass, and the apocalypse never happens. Interestingly, this is a characteristic of multiple religious cults (such as the Seekers of Chicago, and the Order of the Solar Temple). At the moment, we apparently have 12 years to nationalize the entire economy and phase out fossil fuels before we all die a fiery death.
There’s also no shortage of conspiracy theories about who they consider to be Earth’s greatest saboteurs. They have an enemies list. The fossil fuel industry is at the top of it, with widespread tinfoil hat theories about oil companies burying patents for efficient renewable fuel recipes to keep us all guzzling gasoline.
The “repent or burn” doomsday preaching is the most well-known staple of the Climate Change movement, and quite clearly exemplifies the fourth warning sign for unsafe groups.
5. There is no legitimate reason to leave, former followers are always wrong in leaving, negative or even evil.
Climate alarmists who leave, step back from, or even lightly criticize the movement are immediately subjected to vicious smear campaigns. Dutch professor Richard Tol experienced this phenomenon firsthand when he removed his name from an IPCC climate report and criticized the reports excessively apocalyptic predictions.
The smear campaign was led by Bob Ward, director of policy at the London School of Economics’ Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change “This has all the characteristics of a smear campaign”, Tol said. “It’s all about taking away my credibility as an expert.”
The treatment of Professor Tol is not uncommon, and clearly demonstrates that the Climate Change movement exhibits the fifth warning sign for unsafe groups.
6. Former members often relate the same stories of abuse and reflect a similar pattern of grievances.
Professor Tol is not an anomaly. Dr. Richard Lindzen of MIT, Dr. Nils-Axel Morner, and countless other former IPCC in-crowd climate experts were subjected to smear campaigns from their colleagues and the news media for the crime of throwing cold water on the outlandish predictions of the Climate Change movement.
This pattern is all too familiar to anyone who has studied what happens to individuals who leave the Church of Scientology, and clearly meets the sixth warning sign for unsafe groups.
7. There are records, books, news articles, or television programs that document the abuses of the group/leader.
The abuses of the Climate Change movement are loud and proud. They vociferously attack their perceived enemies for public consumption, and are cheered on by fellow travelers in the journalism class. Most recently they brainwashed a bunch of kids and marched them into an octogenarian Democrat Senator’s office to beg not to be murdered by a ‘No’ vote on impossible legislation. Have you seen those kids in Diane Feinstein’s office? You should, it’s creepy, here they are.
These tantrums and protests aren’t only meant to rally supporters of the Climate Change movement. They are a form of intimidation, a tactic used to silence those who question the gospel. There is ample evidence that the Climate Change movement meets the seventh warning sign of an unsafe group.
8. Followers feel they can never be “good enough”.
The atonement process for Climate warriors always demands more. It started with using a recycling bin and grocery bags. Now, in 2019, being a good follower means imposing veganism on the masses and issuing fatwahs against innocuous objects such as plastic straws and grocery bags. Despite all the efforts of the faithful, Climate minions maintain a constant state of dread and despair, knowing they can never truly do enough to stop the coming doom.
Clearly, the eighth warning sign for unsafe groups applies to the Climate Change movement.
9. The group/leader is always right.
When have the climate leaders been called wrong for their failed predictions? Regardless of the weather, they are always intrinsically correct.
Flood? Climate Change. Drought? Climate Change.
No Snow? Climate Change. Too much snow? Climate Change.
One of the best aspects of the movement is “weather is climate until it isn’t”. The acolytes of Climate Change will point out the window in a heat wave and say, “See? We’re right!”
If a skeptic points out the window during a blizzard, the same acolytes will simply cry “Weather isn’t climate!” It’s a game they can never lose, one in which they are never wrong and always right.
Thus, the ninth warning sign for unsafe groups clearly applies.
10. The group/leader is the exclusive means of knowing “truth” or receiving validation, no other process of discovery is really acceptable or credible.
The path to discovery for the Climate Change movement is an intentionally vague discipline referred to as “climate science”.
Did you carry out a study on gender and glaciers? Climate Science.
Did you think up the worst possible scenarios that have no actual chance of happening (actual portion of latest National Climate Assessment)? Climate Science.
Any “science” that confirms the tenets of the Climate Change movement is deemed “climate science”, while actual scientific research that disputes their conclusions is derided as “denialism”.
The tenth warning sign for unsafe groups is clearly met.
The Verdict: It’s a cult
According to the established, scientific guidelines developed by cult experts, the Climate Change movement fits the bill for a potentially unsafe group.
When I looked up these established warning signs, I honestly expected Climate Changeists to meet two or three of them, NOT TEN! The disturbingly religious nature of this supposedly “scientific” movement should alarm any thinking human being, especially since the movement now openly seeks to nationalize the entire economy.
It’s time for conservatives to realize what they are dealing with, and act accordingly. Rather than debating Climate Change activists, it may be time to start staging interventions.
If someone you know is a member of the Climate Change Movement, and you are interested in intervention strategies, please visit.
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